A Singular Defense Team; Religion and Variety of Styles Help Set Lawyers Apart in Trade Center Bombing Trial

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

Published: October 25, 1993

There comes a moment in the trial of four men in the bombing of the World Trade Center when worlds mingle and sometimes clash.

The scene is this: A tall Federal agent with the standard-issue mustache and dark blue suit has been led through his testimony by a prosecutor (who, except for the mustache, looks quite a lot like the witness). The prepared testimony finished, the moment for improvisation arrives and Hassen Ibn Abdellah, a slim, agile man with a closely cropped beard, strides to the lawyer's podium and interrupts the smooth and cozy proceeding.

Mr. Abdellah does not fit many people's stereotype of a trial lawyer. He is no Perry Mason, no Arnold Becker, smugly defending his clients all the way to the bank. He is not Christian or Jewish. He is not white. But, in a trial that has been generally more a courteous playing field than an arena for dramatic confrontation, he is by far the most aggressively combative of the lawyers in the case. Not Conforming to an Image

The first three weeks of testimony have shown that when Mr. Abdellah strides to the lawyer's stand to question a Government witness, the temperature in the courtroom is going to rise a degree or two.

In fact, Mr. Abdellah is not the only one of the eight defense lawyers in the World Trade Center case who does not conform to any standard Ivy League image. Five of the lawyers are Muslims. They include a Pakistani-American and a Palestinian-American as well as Mr. Abdellah and the two other black lawyers helping him represent Mahmud Abouhalima, the Egyptian-born former taxi driver accused of helping to manufacture and transport the bomb used in the attack.

One lawyer, Atiq R. Ahmed, who represents Nidal A. Ayyad, is relatively gentle in his cross-examinations, deliberately probing Government witnesses for information that might be useful to the defense. Another lawyer, Robert E. Precht, who represents Mohammed A. Salameh, the lead defendant, seems more traditional in his approach, assuming what might be called a politely oppositional stance toward witnesses. The fourth lawyer in the case, Austin V. Campriello, whose client, Ahmad M. Ajaj, has been in prison in another case since well before the bombing, has been content to remain on the sidelines.

Mr. Abdellah, by contrast, has cross-examined half or more of the Government witnesses, and in doing so he has come on like an avenging wind. He challenges their expertise. He reminds the jury that the witnesses have been coached by the prosecutors beforehand. His machine-gun approach seems aimed at rattling his adversaries, goading them into some inconsistency regarding what they saw and when they saw it.

It remains to be seen how effective Mr. Abdellah's style will be with the jury, which has a mixture of black and white members, though it has no Muslims.

There is an up-from-the-street quality about all three of the attorneys on Mr. Abouhalima's team. All of them are from what one of them, Clarence Faines 3d, calls "the 'Hood" in Elizabeth or Newark, N.J. Like the defendants, all are Muslims. None of them have ever argued a case in Federal court before, much less in a case of this magnitude.

"Not only are we Muslims," Mr. Abdellah said in a lunchtime break from the trial last week. "But this is a case where people can say we represent the American dream. We don't come from affluent homes. We come from urban America."

"The American dream," Mohammed Ibn Bashir joined in, "is that you start from humble origins, you work hard, your parents keep you on the straight and narrow, and eventually you can succeed.

"We are 100 percent that. All the ingredients are there."

Mr. Bashir, at 39 the oldest of the three, grew up in Elizabeth, went to Thomas Jefferson High School there and then to Howard University and Howard University Law School. He was a public defender for five years and has a law practice in New Jersey.

Mr. Faines, 38, was born in North Carolina but grew up in Newark and went to Rutgers and Rutgers Law School. Between 1988 and 1992 he was an assistant corporation counsel to the City of Newark and is now a partner in Faines, Washington & Jones in Montclair.

Mr. Abdellah, 35, was a childhood friend of Mr. Bashir in Elizabeth. He went to Bucknell University and Seton Hall Law School. He and Mr. Bashir remember the day when they were teen-agers and were identified to the police, falsely, by a homeowner in Elizabeth as the two young black men who had broken into her home.

"I said to the cops, 'We don't have anything that the woman said was stolen, and we're wearing clean white pants,' " Mr. Abdellah said. He said the pants were important because the robber had made his escape by sliding down a drainpipe that ended in a coal yard and was seen running through the coal yard.

"That's when I decided I was going to be a lawyer," Mr. Bashir said.

That was by no means the last time Mr. Abdellah and his associates have been forced to confront racial stereotypes. Mr. Faines recalls walking into a courtroom once in Passaic County and a court officer reflexively asking him if he was looking for his lawyer.

"I told him that the last time I saw my lawyer was when I looked at myself in the mirror that morning," Mr. Faines said. "He apologized immediately."

Mr. Bashir also remembers a criminal trial in which a prosecution witness was asked to point out the defendant. She pointed to Mr. Bashir.